Author's Note: This one's a short one! Because Emily Deschanel's birthday was Tuesday, I decided that I would post a "Brennan-heavy" chapter. ALSO, in an unrelated note... It's MY birthday today, and if that means I can do what I want to because I'm the Queen of the day, then I say you should send me reviews on this chapter as my birthday present!
(JK. You don't have to. It is my birthday, but you don't have to do anything!)
Setting: First part: see below. Second part: any time.
Sense of History
An exploration of an event or events that occurred in the past, usually before the writer—you—were born, but somehow involve you.
(For all intent and purposes, instead of "before the writer" was born, I'm choosing "before the premise of the show," aka anything before the Pilot/100th episode.)
She walked silently through the hall, unnoticed, but noticed as a pariah. Few stares floated her way and she wrapped her baggy sweatshirt tighter around her abdomen, hiding in the excess of the fabric. The wind blew on her exposed left knee from the rip in her jeans and she shivered, but not because of the weather.
Her memories haunted her with the simple gust of wind. Images of her front door opening and the cold air of the storm outside making its way in alongside her brother, instead of her dad, who was carrying logs for a fire on Christmas morning. Pictures of watching her brother drive away days later, efficiently abandoning her, as the leaves of the trees brushed together.
Most recently, the memory of her foster father barging into the bathroom as she stepped out of the shower the night before filled her mind, the colder air from outside the bathroom rushing in. The words he said, the loudness of his voice—they all terrify and hurt her like being stabbed in the gut.
She once more tightened the sweatshirt around her torso in hopes of pulling it just tight enough for her to stop breathing, to make everything go away.
She has long been reserved, a result of her tainted childhood, but even more so now after her foster father's berating. She's broken, stuck in a perpetual storm, secretly looking for a Sun.
She was hopeless as a teenager. She knew she was smart, knew she had a bright career in front of her, but she thought she would go through the rest of her life alone. As a high school student, as a lost young girl, she never thought she would find her way out from under the oppression of the gray clouds that seemed to follow her around.
She was understood by few and eventually learned to remain unfazed, or at least appear unperturbed, by what people said. She begun to ignore the snickers, to ignore the stares. She convinced herself that it didn't mean anything as her way of coping.
Then she met him, she finally met someone who made her world just a tiny bit brighter. After such a long time on her own she finally met someone who meant something to her. He changed her life and made her a better person.
Walking through the bullpen to his office, she adjusted her shirt. A few people waved or nodded their heads at her. Others didn't even look up; she was such a common fixture there that her presence was nothing out of the ordinary.
There was no special occasion, no reason to be particularly excited, but she found herself anxious to see him. After licking her lips once, she pushed through his door. He looked up from his desk and smiled, and she met his grin.
He was the Sun that she struggled to find for so long.